CHENNAI: India will soon have 'Navratna' Universities on the lines of the famous Ivy League varsities, which will be "free them from the shackles of government control," Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said today.

In his keynote address at the 98th Indian Science Congress at SRM University near here, Sibal said that this would be achieved by measures including generous financial support and access to external funding.

"We are working on the concept of having Navratna Universities or an Indian Ivy League.We intend to nurture these select universities, like the public sector navratnas, by generous financial support, freedom in accessing external funding and total autonomy so as to free them from the shackles of government control," he said speaking on the topic 'Quality Education and Excellence in Science Research in Indian Universities.

The eight Ivy League institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University , Dartmouth College, Harvard University , Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

He said such an initiative would be useful in achieving the challenge of developing human and social capital that will enable youth to work and compete globally.

"In regard to our existing navratnas-the IITs and IIMs--we are according full powers to their Boards to create posts within the approved norms, top up the salaries of the Directors and Faculty from the funds generated by them, open centres in India and abroad, amend rules within the framework of their Memorandums of Association and Rules, acquire and dispose property and manage funds generated on their own," he said.

With this autonomy, the government sought to build accountability and the Director and the Board would prepare annual action plans and monitorable key performance indicators at each level, he said.

With India moving towards being an "affluent society" there was a need to tackle much more aggressively the structural inequities, especially in education front, he said.

"This has come mainly from two groups that traditionally were not known to attend universities: a rising lower middle class and women. These sources will continue to fuel the demand for higher education and will be fighting for more places for quality education. This will necessitate many more universities and colleges to be opened in the years to come. Most estimates project a minimum doubling over the next decade," he said.

The government's goal was to double the GER by 2020, and this will entail massive capacity building, both institutional as well as human, Sibal said.

India doesn't require another slew of 'elite academic institutions',like IIM's, whose fee structure,which is exorbitant even for a developed economy let alone a developing one like ours,disqualifies vast sections of the country's population from availing their so called excellent education.Instead funding must be increased to improve the faculty&facility at our existing universities and affiliated colleges which cater to the education needs of the majority population and who are are actually need of 'Navaratna' attention.

India doesn't require another slew of 'elite academic institutions',like IIM's, whose fee structure,which is exorbitant even for a developed economy let alone a developing one like ours,disqualifies vast sections of the country's population from availing their so called excellent education.Instead funding must be increased to improve the faculty&facility at our existing universities and affiliated colleges which cater to the education needs of the majority population and who are are actually need of 'Navaratna' attention.

India doesn't require another slew of 'elite academic institutions',like IIM's, whose fee structure,which is exorbitant even for a developed economy let alone a developing one like ours,disqualifies vast sections of the country's population from availing their so called excellent education.Instead funding must be increased to improve the faculty&facility at our existing universities and affiliated colleges which cater to the education needs of the majority population and who are are actually need of 'Navaratna' attention.

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mate over all i agree with your point and it is of utmost importance that the quality of education across the board needs to be brought at par with the likes of IITs/IIMs but then that will be a huge task, and is bound to take a lot of time to materialize.

to begin with where does one get the faculty from? no one who is really good wants to get into teaching job till the time they are paid well and that would mean as good as someone else working in the corporate or if someone has really a passion for teaching which sadly is not the case with too many out there and so the very good are either lost to the industry or to over seas universities. then there remains a question of resources and infrastructure, imagine at this given moment the ger is at a mere 15%, which i think has seen an upward trend which if i am not mistaken was around 13% for last year, and with the aim of doubling the ger by 2020 they really cant be too hard pressed on quality right away given the scarcity of resources, india still hardly spends a mere 3% and there abouts as a % of gdp which means there is a huge scarcity of funds and so they have to make do with what ever little is on offer.

so if a few institutes are being formed which could in times to come pretty much challenge the IITs and the IIMs, which will be as autonomous as it gets with out any government interference, which will look to generate their own revenues, with a faculty that would be considered amongst the very best out there, then why give a miss to such an opportunity, if india can have one ISB which has a top ranking and beats the IIMs then why not have many more such institutes as such there is a quota system that gets followed in GMAT which limits the number of indian students who have money, good knowledge base but cant make it to those top univs elsewhere and then with a growing economy numbers with quality will have to be found and if india can it self have those tops univs right here then that also checks the flow of forex outwards.

In India academic autonomy has been reduced to one thing govt control over fee structuring.The only reason why education institutions across the board clamor for autonomy is not because the govt stifles any over arching knowledge that these institutions propose to introduce,but to commercially exploit and abuse indian society's near obsession with higher education(western medium,engineering ,management etc)

How many people in India can afford a seat in any of the IIM's or IIT's,whose annual fess for a complete term course runs in lakhs of Rupees.We already have them and they are enough to produce all those high flying investment bankers and It whiz kids,who i honestly dont think they deserve those fat packages.our approach to higher education is too cosmetic and elitist,we are just awed by the western universities and want to emulate them.In all this we forget that these mighty western institutions had very humble beginnings,none of them had the equivalent of Navaratna tags or associated pandering.These were small institution that grew large because they played a indelible role in providing affordable and quality education to all segment of the western society and in turn over the years the state and society generously patronized them.

We are just interested in the manifest form,big campus,big endowment,faculty with big names and bigger packages,there is no sufficient thought given to substance.

no dispute on the attempt of aping the west and there is a reason as well since the world economy has so far been dominated by capitalism and so anything that goes into making of that gets picked up quick and fast and the type of education being one.

in here what i see different is the government is saying these institutes will have to make do on their own with very little support from the government which would largely be confined in passage of the bill if required, support in allocation of land and the likes with no interference on who should be enrolled in faculty, how they should be enrolled, what the course would be followed, what kind of a fee structure be there,what the pattern of financing will be with no support from the government on that, what would the salary of the faculty be which i believe is very important since these factors play a very crucial part in making of a good institute accompanied by various other factors and all this means unlike the IIMs/IITs these institutes wont be a burden on the government or the state exchequer.

is it only about big campus, big brand, big names, no i dont think so because if that is what the attempt is then that wont yield anything rather than a white elephant and the IITs/IIMs are certainly not that.

coming to the number of students, each year there are a good number of students who move outside india for higher education, the number if not more should atleast run into a couple of tens of thousands so even for those elitist institutes there is enough demand to cater to and the competition to keep the standards high enough.

fact of the matter is as the economy grows we will require more and more graduates and PGs and quality will be a big factor and where the quality wont be good enough there the industry will have to chip in by way of training and making their employees employable and i think even this can be sorted out if the industry interface is extensive when these kids are still studing and why not, if these companies are looking for campus placements then they can always work out these things well in advance with the given institute but then that does mean the government needs to take a back seat and not continue the way they are where they control every thing.

If the so called Nine star tag merely entails a process of standardization of education,which does not involve splurging public treasury in the form of grants,public land,tax breaks,then its partially ok.However the Hon'ble Minister is already speaking about generous govt funds and foreign funding.Any attempt to standardize education system,esp in higher education,without taking into consideration state and quality of education of thousands of govt recognized universities and their affiliated colleges would be huge disservice to the national literacy cause.If we standardize higher education on western lines or on the prototype or IIM's and IIT's,without any effort to raise the the UGC recognized universities to the same level,will further make these universities and their Lakhs fresh graduates completely useless when they hit the job market.

Unfortunately there already exists a form of implied standards in indian higher education in the form if IIT's and IIM's and it is to these institutions that corporates and other industries go for their annual cherry picking.How many corporates conduct campus selection for B,com or BSc graduates in their universities or colleges,none because there is already a prejudice that IIM's produce the best managers and commerce graduates from regular universities will not stand up to the competition.Even in BE colleges regular campus recruitment is largely thanks to the IT boom(because of which BE colleges have jacked up their admission fees,which used to be affordable to working class people in the past)

If India is gong to produce quality workforce that will drive the new age economy in the 21st century,it will not come from elite institutions like IIM's or IIT's(they will produce some Nobel prize winner or high flying CEO of some mega corp in the future)but that skill force will come from the working class families who go regular universities,let make sure the education they get is quality oriented,skill oriented and ore importantly affordable.After that we are super power :